Net Metering to Distributed Generation Program.

[silversaver]

Two Jewish tailors, Adam and David, with stores side by side are talking in front of their shops about business. Adam is frustrated because business is so slow, and David is happy and extremely busy.

Adam charges $400 for a tailored men's suit and it cost him $350 to make a suit. David on the other hand charges $300 for the same suit, but cost him the same $350 to make it. Naturally David is selling suits faster than he can make them. Adam knows the economics and ask David how he can stay in business selling for a loss. David happily replies: I make up for it in volume.

jerk! LMAO haha

[raydias]

That was the only question - it is rather silly to install more solar when you get so little for the surplus and you have no idea when the clowns are going to change the rules again.

Looks like Russ is at least contributing intelligently to the request at hand.

Hopefully the PUC will review this situation and provide clarity since investor owned utilities are on the hook until 2017 for NetMetering. After that who knows.

Best bet would be to reduce consumption as I stated earlier.

And as for the peanut gallery that has nothing intelligent to say:
"Sometimes I don't know whether to laugh at you or pity you."

[russ]

Two Jewish tailors, Adam and David, with stores side by side are talking in front of their shops about business. Adam is frustrated because business is so slow, and David is happy and extremely busy.

Adam charges $400 for a tailored men's suit and it cost him $350 to make a suit. David on the other hand charges $300 for the same suit, but cost him the same $350 to make it. Naturally David is selling suits faster than he can make them. Adam knows the economics and ask David how he can stay in business selling for a loss. David happily replies: I make up for it in volume.

I heard that one with two old guys in Oregon the butt of the joke. They had a truck and would buy watermelons in Hermiston for 5 cents/lb, truck them 400 miles and sell them in Portland for 5 cents/lb. They were going broke so they had a business meeting together. While drinking beer they talked over all aspects of the business and came to the conclusion - they were just going to have to get a bigger truck.

[J.P.M.]

Looks like Russ is at least contributing intelligently to the request at hand.

Hopefully the PUC will review this situation and provide clarity since investor owned utilities are on the hook until 2017 for NetMetering. After that who knows.

Best bet would be to reduce consumption as I stated earlier.

And as for the peanut gallery that has nothing intelligent to say:
"Sometimes I don't know whether to laugh at you or pity you."

And since the City of Shasta is not an I.O.U., think they can do what they are doing, at least according to my VERY cursory reading.

[inetdog]

I heard that one with two old guys in Oregon the butt of the joke. They had a truck and would buy watermelons in Hermiston for 5 cents/lb, truck them 400 miles and sell them in Portland for 5 cents/lb. They were going broke so they had a business meeting together. While drinking beer they talked over all aspects of the business and came to the conclusion - they were just going to have to get a bigger truck.

Reminds me of the guy who was voted least likely to succeed in his high school class. An academic failure and not much on personality either.
At the ten year reunion he arrived in a very long limo.

When his classmates asked him how he had come by the money, he replied.

"It wasn't hard at all. I just found something I could make for $1 and sell for $3. It's amazing how fast that 2% profit adds up."

[Ian S]

Looks like Russ is at least contributing intelligently to the request at hand.

Hopefully the PUC will review this situation and provide clarity since investor owned utilities are on the hook until 2017 for NetMetering. After that who knows.

Best bet would be to reduce consumption as I stated earlier.

And as for the peanut gallery that has nothing intelligent to say:
"Sometimes I don't know whether to laugh at you or pity you."

Seems to me you need to get after the local officials and let then know just how unhappy you are. Confront them with the idea that you should get as good treatment as customers of investor owned utilities since they also have to make a profit.

[silversaver]

Seems to me you need to get after the local officials and let then know just how unhappy you are. Confront them with the idea that you should get as good treatment as customers of investor owned utilities since they also have to make a profit.

He isn't the OP. He just came in and giving the wrothless advise to OP and he didn't realize that..... Even OP knew he got screwed by POCO..... ouch, read if you care

Looks like you have a few options

- add more solar to reduce what you get from the utility overall
- run the numbers and see when you use city power and see if you can reduce that by either improving efficiency or shifty loads to times when you produce excess
- add a battery system to minimize power sent to the utility as well as power from the utility

very short sited since they save in transmission upgrades and in purchasing power by getting your excess and sending it to the neighbor(s)

You might also want to see if the PUC has anything to say about this. Finally you can complain to your Representative at the state capital see. i can see more utilities (Government run) trying to go down this route to discourage solar.

[J.P.M.]

He isn't the OP. He just came in and giving the wrothless advise to OP and he didn't realize that..... Even OP knew he got screwed by POCO..... ouch, read if you care

FWIW, I think that at least some of that advice makes sense, and whether I agree with it or not, it still has value as an opinion.

[jschner]

The city is holding a "workshop" on Wed. to try to explain things with current and future PV owners. This will be my chance to meet the other PV owners and explain the amount of greed this city electric department has and expose their conflict of interest to owners and the city council who might be there.

I need to explain the benefits solar had for the city prior to the new rates they have passed. Things like:

1. Helped the City meet the demands of California SB1.
2. Helped the city become more green, solar friendly and reduce CO2 emissions.
3. Gave the city 100% of my solar credits.
4. Homeowner takes all the risk in equipment, repairs, and buying quality equipment.
5. PV System reduces peak demand on transmission lines lowering maintenance and expansion costs for the city.

Any other benefits?

I also need info to counter these claims:
They argue they are a for profit utility and I only paid $68.89 last year for electricity at the regular rate. IMO they totally negate the reasons why they need my PV system and it's benefits to the city. Also systems as small as 1kW could have been installed. At $3 a watt for installation and after city and federal rebates it would have only taken $1000 for a home to install a PV system. That makes solar installation competitive to any of the other rebate programs going on in the city available to everyone, including the "poor."

They also argue my PV system is subsidized by the "poor" because my home is connected to their transmission lines at night and poor weather and I use the lines during solar production. Again I also benefit the city by helping to reduce peak demand on their transmission lines which they convioently forgot to be told by the elctric department and partly why they wanted PV systems in the first place. At peak, my home probably offsets three homes. With 13 PV systems that is close to 39 homes being offset during peak times throughout the city. By their arguments those are most likely larger homes.

Also, I am going through my Net Metering agreement and interconnection agreements and it appears that no changes can be made by either party unless we agree in writing. I have not signed anything. I wonder if new contracts will be handed out at this workshop?

After this workshop I plan on giving all this info to the PUC and see if this is even legal.

So I need more ammo here to rile up the owners and make the city council question what the city electric department sold them on.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Sunking]

1. Helped the city become more green, solar friendly and reduce CO2 emissions.
2. PV System reduces peak demand on transmission lines lowering maintenance and expansion costs for the city.

Both are false statements and myths. You will loose that argument and credibility making those statements.

They also argue my PV system is subsidized by the "poor" because my home is connected to their transmission lines at night and poor weather and I use the lines during solar production.

Valid argument. To pay for the subsidies and losses the utility has to artificially raise electric rates and the city has to raise taxes to pay for it which forces the poor and working class to subsidize you luxury when you can afford it without subsidies.

[jschner]

[/LIST]
Both are false statements and myths. You will loose that argument and credibility making those statements.

Isn't the purpose of California SB1 to help offset peak demand? If it can do it on a large scale, does that not happen on a smaller scale such as the city transmission lines too? I can understand when the solar production surpasses the usage on the transmission lines but, with only 13 PV systems in the whole city electric area of about 2500 homes, it seems to me the 15-20 amps my PV system is generating is being used up with my home and immediate neighbors giving 4kW to 5kW of relief to miles of transmission lines in the city and state. Is that not the case? Serious question - how do you come up with this being a myth? Sure it is minuscule, but isn't that the point of the whole million homes thing that these small systems will add for some amount of peak releif?

Valid argument. To pay for the subsidies and losses the utility has to artificially raise electric rates and the city has to raise taxes to pay for it which forces the poor and working class to subsidize you luxury when you can afford it without subsidies.

The availability of getting into PV in our city was/is really not much different than getting into any of the other rebate programs the city offers everyone. I am not exactly well to do myself and subsidize others through city programs as they received reduced bills along with supporting the public benefit and monthly connection fees. If anything I have become more invisible to the city electric department, not as demanding as other utility customers and that is the rub for them.

Thanks for the feedback but without details of why, I can't readily use it.

What I'm getting at is the the city had reasons to create a website and promote solar in their town the last few years. I'm trying figure out what those reasons were here if we can because they seem to have forgotten those benefits for creating the program in the first place, even though we had a 10 year contract for Net metering and interconnection.

[Ian S]

Isn't the purpose of California SB1 to help offset peak demand? If it can do it on a large scale, does that not happen on a smaller scale such as the city transmission lines too? I can understand when the solar production surpasses the usage on the transmission lines but, with only 13 PV systems in the whole city electric area of about 2500 homes, it seems to me the 15-20 amps my PV system is generating is being used up with my home and immediate neighbors giving 4kW to 5kW of relief to miles of transmission lines in the city and state. Is that not the case? Serious question - how do you come up with this being a myth? Sure it is minuscule, but isn't that the point of the whole million homes thing that these small systems will add for some amount of peak releif?

The availability of getting into PV in our city was/is really not much different than getting into any of the other rebate programs the city offers everyone. I am not exactly well to do myself and subsidize others through city programs as they received reduced bills along with supporting the public benefit and monthly connection fees. If anything I have become more invisible to the city electric department, not as demanding as other utility customers and that is the rub for them.

Thanks for the feedback but without details of why, I can't readily use it.

What I'm getting at is the the city had reasons to create a website and promote solar in their town the last few years. I'm trying figure out what those reasons were here if we can because they seem to have forgotten those benefits for creating the program in the first place, even though we had a 10 year contract for Net metering and interconnection.

I would also argue a basic fairness issue for the existing solar customers. The utility has basically screwed them with a bait and switch - especially if the utility actually pushed folks to get solar in the first place. Even in the bitter battles with APS in Arizona last year, there was always going to be grandfathering of existing solar installs. Even APS understood that investing in solar is a long term proposition and that should be considered when any changes to the net metering are proposed.

[silversaver]

I would also argue a basic fairness issue for the existing solar customers. The utility has basically screwed them with a bait and switch - especially if the utility actually pushed folks to get solar in the first place. Even in the bitter battles with APS in Arizona last year, there was always going to be grandfathering of existing solar installs. Even APS understood that investing in solar is a long term proposition and that should be considered when any changes to the net metering are proposed.

+1. the POCO has basically screwed his solar investment. It is all about fairness. It probably cost him more $$$ to produce each kWh than what he gets credit from POCO.

[jschner]

I would also argue a basic fairness issue for the existing solar customers. The utility has basically screwed them with a bait and switch - especially if the utility actually pushed folks to get solar in the first place. Even in the bitter battles with APS in Arizona last year, there was always going to be grandfathering of existing solar installs. Even APS understood that investing in solar is a long term proposition and that should be considered when any changes to the net metering are proposed.

Thanks. I spoke at the city council meeting tonight and mentioned this very thing that both the APS and CPUC grandfathered existing agreements out of fairness and not killing ones investment in solar. I also mentioned the APS charged at a rate of $0.70 per system kW for new hookups as the cost of being attached to transmission lines. The APS rate in my case would be $4 a month. Then I pointed out that under the new city DG program my connection costs would be around $58 a month. That was their main argument and $58 is grossly unfair and out of the norm of the other utilities.

I made a request to halt the DG program for existing solar households because it was unfair and plain not right based on the agreements. They laughed when I said they might as well take 7 panels off my house and place them on City Hall. Not sure if it was a good laugh or bad laugh.

Anyway, I was the only one there out of the 13 solar homes but the council agreed to check into the grandfathering for existing solar homes. They were also invited to the solar workshop tomorrow run by the City Electric Director who personally tried to argue points and obviously does not have solar in his best interest.

Trying to get a few of the other 13 solars to jump onboard. We will see how it all goes.

[J.P.M.]

Thanks. I spoke at the city council meeting tonight and mentioned this very thing that both the APS and CPUC grandfathered existing agreements out of fairness and not killing ones investment in solar. I also mentioned the APS charged at a rate of $0.70 per system kW for new hookups as the cost of being attached to transmission lines. The APS rate in my case would be $4 a month. Then I pointed out that under the new city DG program my connection costs would be around $58 a month. That was their main argument and $58 is grossly unfair and out of the norm of the other utilities.

I made a request to halt the DG program for existing solar households because it was unfair and plain not right based on the agreements. They laughed when I said they might as well take 7 panels off my house and place them on City Hall. Not sure if it was a good laugh or bad laugh.

Anyway, I was the only one there out of the 13 solar homes but the council agreed to check into the grandfathering for existing solar homes. They were also invited to the solar workshop tomorrow run by the City Electric Director who personally tried to argue points and obviously does not have solar in his best interest.

Trying to get a few of the other 13 solars to jump onboard. We will see how it all goes.

Good luck, seriously. Whether we all agree or not, you're doing what more of us (me included) take for granted and maybe could be doing more of in a free society. FWIW, your actions give me pause for thought and make me a bit embarrassed and ashamed for my laziness and cynicism. Bitching is easy. Getting involved takes a sack.